Jesus Jones producer moves to Logic and Mac

The Mac and music message gets stronger as former Jesus Jones producer dumps analogue alternatives for a Mac-based Logic/Pro Tools set-up.

By
Jonny Evans
| 23 Mar 07

Producer Martyn Phillips has made the move to Logic Pro for his musical creations – and doesn't want to look back.

Phillips produced global number one hits for the likes of Jesus Jones (Right Here, Right Now) and Londonbeat (Thinking ABout You), using the 48-track studios popular at that time.

Now he uses a Mac running Logic Audio (along with ProTools), and told Macworld that he's "genuinely excited" that these solutions offer him all the flexibility of the recording studios he once used, in a package he can carry with him where he goes.

Phillips records acoustic instruments side-by-side with MIDI-triggered Logic plug-ins to get the best of both digital and analogue worlds, and runs the majority of his audio effects on the Mac.

His current project is London-based act, Fire In The South. Production sessions with the band using the Apple kit went so well they invited him to join as a full-time band member.

Working in a live environment led Phillips to acquire a MacBook Pro for reproducing the music on-stage, and he's thrilled with the results: "I was amazed to find just how much power the new laptops put at your disposal, which means you can reduce the triggering latency till it is unnoticceable," he told Macworld.

He's also been able to set up a trigger system for the band's keyboard player, which means signals to activate audio effects can be triggered by MIDI coming in through USB.

"We haven't found a song yet where the MacBook Pro can't cope with everything I am doing on guitar and everything he wants to trigger at the same time."

The band's video director, Steve Price (Kasabian, Razorlight) also used Macs to make the promotional video, this time running Final Cut Pro.

The video casts the lead singer as an animation and required 25 shots of each take. Price experimented with a new technique for the project, he explains: "When I edited the footage I used individual frames, in sequential order, from each take, thus making Stone appear as if he is an animation, with the background moving backwards and forwards in time lapse." The effect has only been used once before.

"This video will have more cuts in it than any other music video ever made, by virtue of the fact that almost every frame will be an edit for at least half of the duration of the video. What's more, I only had two days to do the edit in because it had to be shown at the single launch party three days after the video shoot. Thank you Final Cut Pro."